Answers in the Pages Read online

  “You see?” Allison said.

  Kira sighed. “Okay. I get that. But still, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. My moms are not happy that suddenly someone’s trying to ban a queer book in my class.”

  At that moment, the bell rang and Mr. Howe walked in the door.

  He didn’t look happy, either.

  “All right, everyone…sit yourselves down,” he said. When we were all quiet, he continued. “I’m guessing that by now you know that some parents have raised questions about my choice of reading material. I have to tell you, when I assigned the book to you, I never in a million years thought there was anything in it that would cause an objection. And having given it some more thought, I still feel there is nothing in it that’s wrong to teach in this class. But in the end, it’s not my opinion that matters the most. Nor is it any single parent’s opinion that matters the most. Our school system has a procedure for book challenges, and the principal has assured me that it will be followed here.”

  He took a deep breath, then looked as many of us in the eye as he could. “I’ve been instructed to collect your books for now. I’ve let Principal Woodson know that you weren’t supposed to bring them to class today, and that since it’s Friday, we probably won’t be able to collect them until Monday. She understood. Is there anyone who has a copy they’d like to turn in now?”

  Kids started looking around the room, wondering who’d volunteer. I turned to Allison, but she was looking around at other people, as if she didn’t have a copy in her bag.

  “No one?” Mr. Howe said. Then he smiled. “Figures this would be the first time you all followed my instructions.”

  Luther Haines raised his hand and started waving for Mr. Howe’s attention.

  “Yes, Luther?” Mr. Howe said.

  “Rick and Oliver aren’t gay, right?” Luther blurted out. “I mean, my dad said it’s a gay book and it isn’t really, is it?”

  The smile drained from Mr. Howe’s face, and now he just looked sad.

  “We’re not going to have this conversation now, Luther. I’m hoping that we’ll continue reading the book in class, and then when we get to the end, we can talk about whatever you’d like. But I want to make this very clear to all of you: It doesn’t matter how you identify Rick or Oliver, or what you think their relationship is or ultimately will be. If we’re going to defend this book—and I promise you, I plan on defending this book—the proper line of defense is not ‘But they’re not gay!’ Because that implies that there would be a legitimate problem if they were gay. The proper defense is ‘It doesn’t matter if they’re gay. The characters can be whoever they are.’ And I know some of you might think I’m saying that because I myself am gay. But I am not saying this as a gay man, or as a gay teacher. I’m saying this as a human being who believes that all human beings should be treated with respect.”

  I thought there’d be nervous giggles. Maybe some jokes. Or guys like Luther being uncomfortable. But instead there was silence—at least until Allison yelled out, “You tell ’em, Mr. Howe!” and Kira and a few other kids started clapping. I started clapping too, even though I saw some people looking over to me, expecting me not to clap, since my mom had started it all.

  Mr. Howe nodded at us, then turned around so we couldn’t see the rest of his reaction. He took a few more deep breaths before turning back to us and saying, “Okay, enough of that. Let’s do some math.”

  * * *

  My mother assumed I didn’t know anything. Over dinner she told me and my dad that she’d had a good meeting with Principal Woodson, but that was all she said. Although I was sure that Allison was asking her mom millions of questions about how her meeting had gone, I didn’t ask a thing. Because if I asked my mom why she was doing this, then it would become clear that I knew what she was doing. And as far as my dad was concerned…as usual, he wanted to keep everyone happy. At the dinner table, he used phrases like “That’s good” and “Fantastic” as if they were punctuation marks to my mother’s sentences. He always seemed interested in what my mother was saying, but never had much to add to it.

  I was glad it was a Friday, because the weekend gave me a lot of secret reading time, so I could read The Adventurers cover to cover…even if the covers weren’t the right ones. Afraid that my parents would surprise me in my room, I’d taken the jacket from a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on my shelf and had dressed The Adventurers up in that. I knew my parents liked Narnia—we’d watched all the movies together—so if they opened my door and asked me what I was doing, I could simply hold up the book and they’d be satisfied. Or so I hoped. Luckily, they left me alone in my room for a lot of the weekend. My father gardened. My mother talked to people on the phone. My room was my only-child fortress.

  When Monday morning came, I put the book back in its safe place under my bed…and prepared to talk to my friends about it. Since they all had to turn in their copies to Mr. Howe, I was sure most of them had tried to read it as quickly as possible, to know why it was being pulled out of their hands.

  I honestly didn’t see what the fuss was about.

  But nobody was asking me.

  Over the next week, Gideon’s days changed. It wasn’t that school was less boring—it was just that Gideon now had Roberto to look forward to.

  On the day after the copies of Harriet the Spy were passed out, Ms. June gave each two-person group a notebook to share.

  “This is not so you can spy,” she reminded the class. “Every week or so, I’ll give you an assignment. The first assignment is simple: I would like you to each share five things your group partner might not know about you. Do it one at a time—one of you starts, then you pass the notebook and the other person writes one, and you go back and forth until you each do five. But it has to be something the other person doesn’t already know about you.”

  Gideon could see that a lot of his friends in the class weren’t happy about this assignment. Joelle and Tucker had immediately chosen each other as partners, and now they looked concerned—they already knew plenty about each other, so finding five things each was going to be hard.

  With Gideon and Roberto, though, it could be anything. Roberto understood this, too, because when Ms. June handed him the notebook, he turned to Gideon and said, “Good thing we don’t really know each other, right?”

  “Totally,” Gideon agreed.

  “Do you want to go first?” Roberto asked.

  “Nah. You have the notebook. You start.”

  Roberto grinned and immediately began to write. But it wasn’t until the end of the day that he passed the notebook to Gideon.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  Gideon wanted to open it right away…but not while Roberto was looking. Or in the same room. Gideon hadn’t read that far in Harriet the Spy, but he figured the notebook was supposed to be a private thing. So he waited until he was back home, back in his room, to read what Roberto had written:

  I was born in Miami, where my abuela and abuelo (my grandparents on my mom’s side) still live. When I was two, we moved to Mexico City to live with my other abuela and abuelo, but when I was four, we moved back to Miami. We still go down to Mexico City every Christmas. We moved here to Virginia because my dad got a really great job, but he promised I’m still going to spend part of the summer in Miami. It’s weird for me because we usually have lots of tías and tíos and primos and primas around, but here the only family is me, my mom, and my dad. I am trying to get my parents to get us a dog instead of cousins, but so far they say no.

  This felt like more than one thing to Gideon, but he didn’t mind finding out so much all at once. He figured he should write back and tell Roberto that he’d lived in the same place his whole life—but Roberto probably already assumed that. And also, Gideon didn’t consider it to be that interesting.

  “What’ll I do?” Gideon asked Samson. He knew Samson wouldn’t reply (*because he knew turtles couldn’t talk). But even the non-reply helped get Gideon to an answer.

  I like turtles.

  I really like turtles.

  Gideon paused for a quick count.

  I have 84 turtles in my collection. 83 of them are not real turtles. But Samson is a real turtle. He lives in my room.

  I try to find turtles wherever I go. I got a turtle in New York City and a turtle in Santa Fe. My grandma gave me a glass turtle she got in Copenhagen, Denmark. She didn’t mail it to me because she didn’t want it to break, so I didn’t get it until she visited. Sometimes when the light from the window hits its shell, it makes a rainbow. It might be my favorite turtle besides Samson.

  I don’t think I’d like having a dog as much as I like having a turtle. But I hope you get a dog if you want a dog.

  Gideon closed the notebook and thought he’d made a good start. Not that many kids in school knew about his turtle collection—just the friends who’d been over to his house.

  It was only after Gideon handed the notebook back to Roberto that he began to worry that Roberto would find what he’d written silly…or babyish…or boring. Throughout the day, Gideon saw Roberto take the notebook out and write in it. But even from the seat behind him, Gideon couldn’t tell what he was writing. He tried to distract himself, debating whether Ms. June was wearing the same dress she’d worn last Wednesday or last Tuesday. Then he tried to make new words of six letters or longer from Founding Fathers written on the board.

  haunts

  reading

  farthing

  fountain

  When Roberto finally passed him the notebook after lunch, it was with a smile. Gideon knew he wouldn’t last until the end of the day, so when Roberto’s back
was turned again and Ms. June was deep into a lesson on molecules, he opened up the notebook.

  In it, Roberto had written:

  I like turtles too.

  Surrounding the sentence, he had drawn lots of turtles. No two were the same. Some were realistic turtles. Some were cartoon turtles. One was a rainbow turtle.

  Gideon didn’t need to count them to know there were eighty-four total.

  Then he counted them. And there were eighty-four total.

  His joy at finding so many turtles waiting for him lasted for a few minutes. Then he started to stress out. How could he respond to this? There was no way he could draw eighty-four dogs.

  At this point, Ms. June saw that he had the notebook out. She didn’t need to say a word—she just locked eyes for a moment with Gideon and he knew he had to put it away and focus on molecules.

  At the end of the day, he put the notebook in his book bag and hoped Samson would be able to help him again. On his way out of class, he asked his friend Mia what she’d written to her partner (Isaac) and she said she’d told him a story about the time her cousin sat on her birthday cake. (*Gideon already knew this story, but apparently Isaac didn’t.) As he started to walk the few blocks home, he tried to think of something hilarious that had happened to him on a birthday. Half a block into the walk, he felt someone come alongside him. He turned his head and found Roberto there.

  “So why do you like turtles so much?” Roberto asked. His tone was casual, as if they walked home together every day.

  “Um…,” Gideon replied. “I guess I like how they carry their home with them. It’s not like they have a whole house, but it’s like they take their room with them. If they’re tired, they can just pull into their shell and go to sleep. The shells are really cool.” Gideon thought about it some more. “And maybe I also like them because they’re slow. A turtle’s never going to jump out at you. It might snap at you, but it’s never going to attack you in a way that’ll really hurt. You don’t need to walk them or worry about them running away. Also, they can live in water and on land, which means that a turtle probably gets to see more of the world than we do.”

  “I love it,” Roberto said.

  Gideon blushed.

  Then Roberto asked, “So when do I get to meet Samson?”

  And Gideon, uncertain, answered, “Now?”

  “Sure!” Roberto said. “Do you live nearby? I just have to be home by four for my piano lesson.”

  “I live two blocks down that way,” Gideon said.

  “Nice! I live three blocks down that way. I think.”

  It felt like a miracle to Gideon, that they lived so close together. (*In reality, the town wasn’t very big.)

  Gideon was not by nature a rule-breaker. But he did make exceptions when he felt the rules were wrong. For example, his parents did not allow him to have friends over when they weren’t at home. Since they worked until five or six every day, this meant that Gideon was basically not allowed to have any friends over except on weekends. Which wasn’t at all fair.

  In breaking this particular rule at this particular time, Gideon was careful. When he and Roberto went to the kitchen to get a snack, he made sure they didn’t pick the same snack, because his mother was much more likely to notice two of the same thing missing than one each of two separate things. He also left the door from the garage open, because when the door from the garage was open, the whole house could hear when someone came home.

  When they got to his room to meet Samson, Gideon felt overwhelmed. Roberto immediately started looking around, taking everything in, and Gideon thought to himself that now he’d have far fewer things to put in the notebook, because Roberto was getting to know him much more in five minutes than he would have from any number of pages of Gideon’s writing.

  The first destination was the terrarium. As Gideon carefully removed the lid and asked Samson about his day, Roberto looked at the other eighty-three turtles arrayed on their shelves.

  “Do they all have names?” he asked. “All my stuffed animals have names.”

  Gideon was surprised by the question. It hadn’t even occurred to him to give the turtles names (*besides Samson). Each of them meant something to him individually, and each had a story it carried with it. But not names. They were the blue marble one, the one with too much makeup, the one with the Empire State Building on its shell. And so forth.

  “Only Samson has a name,” Gideon confessed. Then he thought for a second about what Roberto had said and added, “How many stuffed animals do you have?”

  “A lot,” Roberto answered. “Eighty-four.”

  Then he smiled and asked to be introduced to Samson.

  Gideon removed the turtle from the terrarium and held him up so he was eye-to-eye with Roberto.

  “Samson, this is Roberto. Roberto, Samson.”

  The smile hadn’t left Roberto’s face. “It’s very nice to meet you, Samson,” he said.

  Samson didn’t reply. (*Because he’s a turtle.) But he didn’t pull back into his shell, which he often did when meeting new people.

  “He likes you.” Gideon was confident he could speak on Samson’s behalf.

  He put Samson down, and the two boys sat on the rug and played with him for a bit. Roberto saw Gideon’s copy of Harriet the Spy on the floor next to the bed. He reached over and picked it up, to see where the bookmark was placed.

  “I’m not that far,” Gideon admitted, self-conscious again. “Only the first three chapters.”

  “You haven’t met my favorite character, then,” Roberto said.

  “Who’s that?” Gideon asked.

  “You’ll see,” Roberto teased. Then he examined the piece of paper Gideon was using as a bookmark. On it were the words:

  I see art

  There’s a hit

  Yet I spare

  Tipsy heart

  The heir’s party

  “What’s this?” Roberto asked.

  “Oh. It’s stupid. Just something I do.”

  Gideon was about to explain further, but then Roberto said, “You rearrange the letters, right? That’s cool. You used all the letters for the last one, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. The heir’s party is the only phrase I’ve found so far that has all the letters from Harriet the Spy.”

  “We’ll have to figure out some more!”

  Gideon was thrilled by this news.

  “Yeah, we’ll have to,” he said.

  Then, for the rest of the time that Roberto could stay, they sat on the floor with Samson and tried.

  “It wasn’t your fault that McAllister got away,” Rick assured Oliver.

  Oliver knew that Rick was factually correct. It didn’t feel that way, though.

  Melody had set the bear trap with such precision. But Oliver had gotten too close, and when he’d dodged it, McAllister had seen the dodge and steered clear—straight to safety.

  “Seriously,” Melody said, bringing over some firewood, “don’t sweat it.”

  Oliver knew that his friends didn’t keep track of the times he messed up. He kept track for them. The time he slipped on the Eiffel Tower. The time he got Diet Pepsi for the diplomat instead of Diet Coke and threw off the whole password. The time he hadn’t spotted the tracker on his bicycle until he was halfway toward their safe house. The time he’d thought the English project was due on Thursday when it was really due on Wednesday, and he and Rick had needed to ask a secret service agent to stop at a bookstore on the way to the airport…

  Oops. Rick was saying his name.

  “What?” Oliver asked.

  Rick shook his head. “Lost you to the inventory system again, didn’t we? It’s a drag to see you fall into that pit.”

  Oliver added to the list: The time I was a real drag after McAllister got away from us.

  “Look,” Rick said, “it isn’t every day that we get to toast marshmallows by a campfire in the middle of the wilderness.”

  “We don’t have marshmallows.” Oliver sulked. “And the fire has to be kept low so we’re not spotted.”